Aye, she was a
queen; but I was a chief, and the son of a chief, and I had paid
for her an untold price of skin and boat and bead.
'But why so many words? I was a sailorman, and knew the way of
the ships on the seas. I followed to England, and then to other
countries. Sometimes I heard of them by word of mouth, sometimes
I read of them in the papers; yet never once could I come by
them, for they had much money, and traveled fast, while I was a
poor man. Then came trouble upon them, and their wealth slipped
away one day like a curl of smoke. The papers were full of it at
the time; but after that nothing was said, and I knew they had
gone back where more gold could be got from the ground.
'They had dropped out of the world, being now poor, and so I
wandered from camp to camp, even north to the Kootenay country,
where I picked up the cold scent. They had come and gone, some
said this way, and some that, and still others that they had gone
to the country of the Yukon. And I went this way, and I went
that, ever journeying from place to place, till it seemed I must
grow weary of the world which was so large. But in the Kootenay I
traveled a bad trail, and a long trail, with a breed of the
Northwest, who saw fit to die when the famine pinched.
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